Dave: It's lame enough to go to a Steampunk convention, but it's somehow even lamer to totally do it wrong.

Zack: He's the girl in the peasant costume at the ren faire who never looks up from her iPhone.

Dave: It puts the other nerds in a bad spot, too, because they're assholes if they get mad at you but they're even bigger assholes if they don't get mad at you.

Zack: On the other hand, there is this whole insufferable subset of steampunk that obsesses over reimagining every fictional character as a steampunk version. Like there are probably elaborate brass Darth Vaders, so credit to this guy for sticking a broken umbrella in his toy lightsaber and just rolling with it.

Dave: I think "reimagining" is the worst trend of the 21st Century. Oh, cool, you made all the characters from Futurama... as anime characters! Out of Lego!

Zack: You haven't lived until you have seen genderswapped Star Wars characters in steampunk costumes. Also I am not sure this is the steampunk convention. It might be the awkward conversations between fat guys in vests convention.

Dave: I don't think so, because there would be way more fedoras at that convention. I only see one fedora here, and it might actually be a bowler.

Zack: Yeah and it has goggles on the brim. A dead giveaway.

Dave: Dude, imagine the cast of Harry Potter... as fat guys in vests! Drawn like the Simpsons!

Zack: All the characters from Dr. Who having awkward conversations about retro video gaming and small batch IPAs, only as fat women.

Dave: Sure, but here's the 8-bit version of that.

Zack: Set to the chiptune version of the Soviet national anthem.

Dave: I'm an Artist. You see, what I contribute to human culture is taking things invented by other people and then drawing them in a style invented by other people, and then posting it on the Internet and getting 36 million Facebook likes on Boing Boing.

Zack: Here's what it would look like if Sherlock Holmes was a woman in Tokyo. Correction. Victorian Tokyo.

Dave: I've considered it, and I've decided that if you're going to take your nerd horseshit seriously enough to hold a nerd horseshit convention, at least have the balls to eject the scofflaws. This is YOUR horseshit! Defend it to the death!

(indecipherable yelling as eight heroes stand still in an ankle-deep wavepool)

About This Column

Fashion SWAT... the fashion industry is obsessed with impracticality. We know that what designers create was never meant to be worn by the grimy masses, but that doesn't somehow diminish how ridiculous many of these costumes are. Make no mistake, they are costumes, and like a Halloween prize pageant we will turn our discerning gaze on the grievous fashion misfires of Paris, Milan, and New York. We're not pulling any punches, and we're definitely not interested in making any friends. We're Joan Rivers without Melissa Rivers to temper our screeching. We're the Fashion Police in jack boots. We are Fashion SWAT.